Luminar Technologies is a buzzing new company that offers technology assisting development of self-driving cars. Austin Russell is the founder and CEO of Luminar, but is a surprisingly young age- just 25! Though still very young, Austin Russell is now a member of the exclusive billionaires club. He holds over 100 million shares of Luminar worth about $2.4 billion. Austin Russell set on on his dream to further the development of autonomous vehicle technology when he received a $100,000 scholarship from Peter Theil to drop out of his college, Stanford. His company which creates a safer driving experience by utilizing laser beams to measure distances around the cars has secured Volvo Cars and others as customers. It is estimated that Luminar will generate $1.3 in sales per year by 2026. Though so young, Austin Russell admits it was not an easy journey, but explains that he persevered.
“It has been incredibly intense, exhausting… Everything that we have had to go through every day, climbing this.”
“I am still relatively young, but… there has been a lot of blood, sweat and tears in this. And I was lucky to be able to keep a good enough turnout ”
Austin Russell is a unique entrepreneur because he is one of very few people to become a billionaire before the age of 30. He got there by sheer determination and drive of changing the world of self-driving cars. These are very entrepreneurial traits. I am extremely inspired by Austin Russell, not only because I aspire to be a billionaire, but I also find it very exemplary how driven he is. Despite being exhausted and burnt out, Austin kept pushing to realize his goals
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/361130
Yes! Great article. People tend to think entrepreneurship is easy… I hear it all the time. However this is a great example of how it takes a lot of work, effort, and determination to fulfill a dream and become so successful! Thank you for sharing!
Very interesting that Russell took a new approach to self-driving cars. He did not tackle trying to make a car, but rather he focused on helping create the technology for these companies. Many car companies are great at designing cars, but the self-driving piece is not. Luminar makes this so much easier for those companies as he can focus on making them technology while they can focus on making the car efficient and run.